After decades, DNA test brings Korean War soldier home to honored by a Bay Area burial

SAN BRUNO -- Sixty-two years after Army Sgt. Joseph Steinberg died of starvation in a North Korean prisoner of war camp, his family finally buried him Thursday morning after DNA testing matched his remains earlier this year.

"I thought nothing would ever come of the tests," said Marlene Baisa, of San Jose, the soldier's closest surviving relative. "But here we are."

Under a fleecy blue August sky, a handful of Baisas were joined by dozens of active Army men and women in immaculately pressed uniforms, old soldiers in their faded best and others in leather motorcycle vests bearing the patches of their former units. As a group, their years of service stretched from World War II, Korea and Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Marlene Baisa, middle, the niece of Sgt. 1st Class Joseph Steinberg is presented an American flag by a member of the honor guard at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, Calif., on Aug 1, 2013. (John Green/Bay Area News Group)

They had come to honor a decorated soldier who died an excruciating death but had left his loved ones with happy memories that endured for decades.

"We will never forget his sacrifice," said Maj. David Sifferd, an Army chaplain.

The Army said Steinberg died in April 1951, about two months after his artillery battalion was overrun by Communist Chinese forces in the battle known as the Hoengsong Massacre. He was among 100 men taken prisoner and marched to the infamous Suan Bean Camp in North Korea. His family in San Jose and San Francisco learned later from his fellow prisoners that he died in a most awful way: of starvation.

Dancing athlete

His niece could only guess why he perished while others survived.

Advertisement

"He was a sergeant, and it was their job to help the others," Baisa said, thinking that her uncle could have given his food to prisoners in worse shape. "Or maybe it was something else. He was a small man, only 5-feet, 4-inches, and 132 pounds."

Among Steinberg's surviving relatives, she is the oldest and the only one with vivid memories of an uncle who was "fun, funny, active, a great dancer and athlete and someone who liked to kid around a lot."

Baisa enthusiastically recalled a special story about her uncle. After the end of World War II, where he had fought in the Philippines and New Guinea and survived a terrible case of malaria, Steinberg found himself unemployed in his native San Francisco. He decided to rejoin the Army.

Before shipping out to Japan in 1947 for the occupation, Steinberg visited Baisa's mother, who had divorced and was struggling to raise her children in a humble duplex in what is now San Jose's Willow Glen neighborhood.

"I was 13 years old, and I remember this clearly," Baisa said. "He told my mother, "When I get back, I'm going to buy a house for you on the GI Bill.'"

Instead, the Korean War broke out a few years later. Baisa believes her uncle would have delivered on his promise.

"Our lives, my life, could have turned out very different," she said.

Blood samples

In the early 1990s, decades after the fighting stopped, North Korea delivered 208 boxes containing the remains of as many as 400 Americans. Steinberg's family didn't know about them until 2006, when the Defense Department asked them for blood samples. Last April, the government announced their DNA matched his.

Steinberg's remains were buried over the grave of one his three brothers who served in World War II. The funeral might have been the end of his story, but Baisa says she's motivated to look deeper. The family believes Steinberg married after returning from the Pacific, but no one seems to know what happened to his wife or if they had children, who would be cousins to Baisa.

"With this military funeral, it's like he's here at this point," she said. "It's really fascinating."